Intel's Mobile Chip 'Medfield' Specs and Benchmarks Leaked

Intel's first system-on-chip, codenamed "Medfield," may outperform other chips designed for tablets and smartphones--at least according to performance numbers from the Caffeinemark 3 benchmark tool.

The system-on-chip (SoC) architecture allows Intel to pack everything--storage, RAM, and processor--on one chip, making it ideal for small, thin mobile devices. With Medfield, Intel is going up against the likes of Apple's A-Series, Nvidia's Tegra, Qualcomm's Snapdragon, and Texas Instruments' OMAP.

The 32nm Medfield chip still has a few weeks before it officially launches, but VR-Zone is reporting the first benchmark scores for the "Medfield Tablet Platform."

According to VR-Zone, the Medfield scores an impressive 10500 in Android benchmarking tool Caffeinemark 3. VR-Zone used a reference Android Honeycomb tablet with an x86 processing core running at 1.6GHz, 1GB of RAM, and built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM radio.

For comparison's sake, the Nvidia Tegra 2 scores a 7500, the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 scores 8000, and the Samsung Exynos scores 8500. Medfield's preliminary scores therefore suggest a great performance boost for smartphone and tablet users next year.

Of course, benchmarks don't tell the whole story, so we're still waiting for real-world performance "scores." But, so far, after much struggle to get chips into smartphones and tablets and a lot of work readying Medfield for Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), it looks like the Intel Medfield SoC may be a great chip to have in your future mobile device.

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